“Drinking Those Moments When”

Abstract

As Phillip Strick in Science Fiction Movies notes, science fiction invasion films found at the late-night double feature in the 1950s and ‘60s showcased things noticeably absent in the everyday lives of suburban teenage boys. The formula of these movies is simple: As any teenage boy would have known, “the aliens (or you could call them foreigners) are after our women and control of the world, whichever comes first. It would be unpatriotic to imagine otherwise” (Strick 9). Not only emblematic of problems faced by Americans during World War II, these aliens also functioned as metaphors of the “social ills” that American servicemen faced on returning home: among the lumbering, tentacled monsters signifying the calamities of fascism and communism, one also finds manifestations of the American family man’s concerns with gender hierarchy and social status resulting from women reluctant to leave the workplace, as well as the rock and roll youth culture. In part, these movies—among them Red Planet Mars (1952), She Devil (1957), The Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958), The Wild Women of Wongo (1959), Teenage Monster (1958), Teenage Zombies (1960), Forbidden Planet (1956), Gigantis the Fire Monster (1959), The Leech Woman (1960), and Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)—showcased the state of anxiety in which average Americans were functioning throughout this period.¹